On Nov. 10, the eve of Remembrance Day, an ambitious multi-media concert and commemoration takes place at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim. A secular collaboration between Shaar Hashomayim Music & Arts and the McGill Chamber Orchestra, it will be somewhat akin to a live documentary with a video backdrop and music from composers Ernest Bloch, Samuel Barber, Vaughn Williams and John Williams as well as the world première of Cantata for the Unsung by James M. Stephenson.

Performing alongside the McGill Chamber Orchestra will be the equally renowned violinist Lara St. John, soprano Sharon Azrieli Perez and Shaar cantor Gideon Zelermyer – whose towering background vocals can be heard on the new Leonard Cohen album You Want It Darker.

Aside from the star-studded talent roster, what really sets this Remembrance Day event apart from most others is that it honours the courage of women during the World Wars. Hence the title of this multi-media concert, The Unsung: Women Wartime Heroes.

Hungarian Jew Hannah Senesh joined British forces as a paratrooper. Photo courtesy Shaar Hashomayim Music & ArtsCourtesy Shaar Hashomayim Music and Arts

Lorne Shapiro, a Montreal graphic designer and commercial writer — and member of the Shaar men’s choir — came up with the theme.

“The music component was already in place, but there was no story to go along with it,” he said. “So I was asked to come up with a hook for the event and I kept mulling over different ideas that were war-based.”

“The default is to go with the same cast of war characters. Do we talk about the generals or the soldiers? The dictators or the presidents? The good men or the evil men? It’s always men. Then a little light bulb went on, and I thought: What about the women? But just having that idea alone is meaningless unless you find stories worth telling.”

So Shapiro began extensive research on the subject and discovered scores of stories about nurses, soldiers, survivors and victims.

“But I was looking for a different slant on this. There were a lot of fantastic nurses and members of the armed forces in Canada and the U.S. and overseas, but they weren’t necessarily directly in action. I was looking for something different — heroic women who had been pro-active and whose stories most had never heard of before. And I feel that I hit a goldmine.”

French Resistance fighter and writer Charlotte Delbo was captured and sent to Auschwitz.Courtesy Shaar Hashomayim Music and Arts

That he did. As a result, this commemoration will fuse the dramatic stories of four women: French Resistance fighter and writer Charlotte Delbo, a Catholic who was captured and dispatched to Auschwitz where she would later recount the horrors therein; New York Times journalist Ruth Gruber, who was appointed a commissioned general by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and who went around the world to advocate for Jewish refugees; Hannah Senesh, a young Hungarian Jew who left the country to become a paratrooper with British military forces; and Irina Sendler, a Catholic from Warsaw who at great personal peril saved more Jews from certain death at concentration camps than even Oskar Schindler — of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List fame.

“Sendler was just 29, and she saved some 2,500 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto,” Shapiro marveled. “I’m looking at this and at first I’m thinking it’s either some typo or misrepresentation. So I kept on researching and found more documentation about her efforts with the same story and same statistics about the 2,500, all of whom were children and babies. It was mind-boggling. How come I had never heard of her?

“Her story really stood out for me, but I was blown away in learning about what all these women had accomplished during the war. Their stories are every bit as worthy as what has already been captured in movies or literature. And I had never come across any of them before. But once I found their names and stories, I knew I had a theme for this event.”

Shapiro then went on to pen the narrative that will be read — by women — and that will be woven into this musical and video presentation. Incorporated into the video portion will be footage of the four women.

“This all started as an orchestral concert and sort of evolved into this multi-media collaboration. As this began to take on a life of its own, the musical selections to be played reflected this theme and Stephenson’s Cantata was written as a result of the theme,” he said. “Think of it all as an opera without the histrionics. This is real-life, a documentary with a live orchestra.”

Poland’s Irina Sendler saved the lives of 2,500 children and babies from Warsaw Ghetto.Courtesy Shaar Hashomayim Music and Arts

Shapiro’s voice will not be heard during the presentation. That’s because the Shaar men’s choir — which also provided background vocals on the Cohen album — will not be performing in this concert. But the Shaar children’s choir will be involved.

“I like to think this is all about telling the story of real women, but at the same time it’s tied in to the over-arching story of what’s happened to women’s rights over the last century. At the time of the outbreak of the First World War, women couldn’t vote. But that’s when the first domino fell, and all the social revolutions began at that point and continued and grew and culminated in the 1950s and ’60s.

“In a large way, it’s because of women like these who took the initiative and who suddenly moved past the glass ceiling. They were models of change,” he noted before quickly adding: “It’s sort of ironic that a middle-aged guy like me ends up being the messenger in this case. So it goes.”

Shaar Hashomayim Music & Arts, in collaboration with the McGill Chamber Orchestra, presents The Unsung: Women Wartime Heroes, Thur., Nov. 10, at 7:30 p.m. at the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, 120 Côte-St-Antoine Rd. Tickets are $40 for general admission; $80 for reserved seating. For information and reservations, go to shaarhashomayim.org/theunsungconcert or call 514-937-9471.

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